The American Spectator : There’s Something About Sarah

It has been nearly a year and a half since Sarah Palin became a household name in America and the world over. Despite the fact she was on the bottom half of a losing ticket and hasn’t held public office in more than half a year three cable networks provided live coverage of her address to the Tea Party Convention last Saturday night in Nashville. Is there any other private American citizen who could command that sort of undivided attention?

The answer is nobody else could and liberals know it all too well. How else can one explain their sudden obsession with Palin’s left hand? The best liberals could do was to say that she had cheated by writing a few words on her hand. So let’s see if I get this straight. Sarah Palin has all of six words on her palm and liberals conclude “she needs a cheat-sheet.” (1) Yet liberals don’t seem to mind that President Obama needs a teleprompter to read a nearly 2,000 word speech during the National Prayer Breakfast last week and still mispronounced the word “corpsman” not once but twice. (2) Talk about hand wringing.

But Palin is well aware life is unfair and that this is par for the course. She responded as perhaps only she could. During a rally for Texas Governor Rick Perry the following day, she wrote on her palm for all to see, “Hi Mom!” Now that’s telling liberals to talk to the hand.

Yet for all their disdain for the former Alaska governor, liberals still can’t quite put their finger on her. Much in the same way they couldn’t understand Ronald Reagan. I don’t know if the Tea Party Convention organizers did this by design, but Palin’s speech fell on what would have been President Reagan’s 99th birthday. Indeed, she paid homage to the Gipper when she began her speech. Palin, like Reagan, has an uncanny ability to read the public pulse and tend to it with a common touch.

During Reagan’s lifetime he was at various times called an “amiable dunce,” derided for describing ketchup as a vegetable (even though he never actually did), and chided for reading from cue cards. Yet it is worth remembering what former CNN anchor Bernard Shaw said in conversation with Wolf Blitzer and others following Reagan’s funeral:

SHAW: Can I say something that touches on a very sensitive issue?

BLITZER: Of course.

SHAW: The news media and how we failed to thoroughly cover and communicate the very essences we’re talking about possessed by Ronald Reagan. What I’ve been reading and what I’ve been hearing I did not get during his two terms in office, or did I miss something?

BLITZER: I think you’re on to something, Bernie.

SHAW: I think we failed our viewers, listeners, and readers to an appreciable extent. I can’t quantify it, but I’ll put it there. Because I certainly missed a lot.

Now there are those amongst conservatives who scoff at the notion that Palin is a Reagan in the making. Yet when reading Shaw’s poignant observations one cannot help but think that the liberal media are failing their viewers, listeners, and readers to a considerable extent with Palin as they did with Reagan more than a generation ago. Should Palin run for and be elected to the White House, there is every reason to believe the liberal media will do much the same with her and miss a lot. These sentiments would be especially pronounced should she dethrone Obama. One would hate to think it would take Palin’s passing for the liberal media to utter a kind word about her, but that is probably what it would take.

Yet then again I am sure Palin would just as soon not to live long enough to see the day when MSNBC sings her praises. During her address before the 2008 Republican National Convention she said, “Now here’s a little news flash for those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.” (5)

Of course, there are those who will always believe that Palin will need someone to hold her hand. But she does not stand alone. To paraphrase that great gospel song penned by the late Gene MacLellan, she has “put her hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water/put her hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea.” Just so we are clear the man with that hand is not the “charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” Yet so long as Sarah Palin keeps a firm grip on that hand she will be able to reach out and be received. Meanwhile, liberals will be left to grasp at straws.